Most people decided to hack on PlanningAlerts, a project which allows people to get alerts about what is being built or knocked down in their area. Using an online tool called ScraperWiki you can quickly and easily contribute new planning authorities to PlanningAlerts. During the two afternoons (true hackers aren’t morning people!) our volunteers took up the challenge to write ScraperWiki scrapers for PlanningAlerts with zeal.

What does this mean in practical terms? An additional 1,823,124 Australians can now find out what’s happening in their local community using PlanningAlerts. This is a huge result, coming from a relatively modest effort and a small group of people.